Incidentally, I didn’t intent to come off as longing for a hierarchy. The ability to respond is one thing I envy the Catholics, but the hierarchy is also the central reason I am not Catholic. That doesn’t mean we don’t have things to learn from it, though.

I’ll have to think about your comments here. Having a hierarchy, as has already been discussed, seems to be a double-edged sword.

Nate

P.S. By the way, you all should check out our blog site at http://www.christianityismore.com!

The answer, of course, depends on how you define church. The Anabaptist inability to express collective opinions stems in part from our grassroots definition of church that gives all church members an equal voice (or at least most white males). In the United States, we are dramatically polarized. If compromised by simply expressing a majority opinion, we likely would have endorsed Bush in the last election. You may recall John D. Roth addressing this issue in his C. Henry Smith speech last year.

If Catholics got rid of their hierarchy, would they be able to express themselves any more clearly then Anabaptists? The Catholic Vote in Summer 2004 suggests that U.S. Catholics are nearly as divided as the general public.

Of course, the counter to the grassroots definition of church might be that the opinion of the church should be based on its theology and not the individual views of the church. Which I’m happy to agree with when the theology expressed is as radical as the above. Yet we need to balance the value of the statements made with our assesment of the process from whence they come.